Caregiver conference features Melissa Boeger

Paradise >> When Melissa "Mo" Boeger spoke to family caregivers Thursday, she brought Einstein along with her. Einstein is a life-size model of the human brain, and it accompanies her to numerous speaking engagements. Einstein helps her audiences understand just how vulnerable the human brain is, and how we have some control over that.

Boeger was keynote speaker during a conference titled, "Navigating the Caregiver Experience for Caregivers and Professionals" at Terry Ashe Center. More than 50 people, mostly caregivers, attended the event hosted by Passages Adult Resource Center's Caregiver Support and Connections programs and Butte County Department of Behavioral Health.

Boeger is director of Outcome Research at Amen Clinics and a behavioral neuroscience research consultant with six neuropsychiatric centers. She previously worked as supervising director at the Center for Neuroscience at UC Davis.

In less than two hours, she discussed numerous aspects of brain health, injury, diseases and disorders. "I've been studying the brain for 20 years — I knew at 19 I wanted to do this for the rest of my life."

She said she understood the challenges caregivers face with family members who have diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, are stroke survivors and more. Much of the difficulty is because caregivers do not have definite answers about their relatives' illnesses.

"There are 44 million unpaid caregivers in the U.S. ... Dementia is an umbrella term, and that diagnosis gets you nothing. You need to ask if it's Alzheimer's, a stroke, Parkinson's, alcohol- or drug-induced. When you see the doctor, have your questions ready. Maybe bring a scribe, someone to take notes for you.

"Caregivers tend to be too polite. Push the envelope a bit, so you can know the truth. You need to make decisions."

Caring for adults whose conditions will worsen means planning ahead. "Once you understand the condition, have a family meeting. Family roles are important," she said, explaining it's often typical. Among siblings, there is a caregiver, one who is the entertainer, the financier who takes care of money, and the ostrich, who refuses to see that a problem even exists.

"But everyone can contribute. Ask them, what are you willing to give, and willing to give up?"

She said it's a time to "declutter. You can start with your body," she said, explaining the value of "whole foods living. This is what we do at my house: If grandma wouldn't recognize it, we don't eat it."

Boeger discussed the importance of eating food that is not raised on corn, antibiotics or hormones, and she was making the bigger point that people in general, elderly or not, should not eat that way. She said studies have proven that strokes, Alzheimer's and other problems are caused by environmental toxins.

She discussed forgiveness as beneficial for a family. Caregivers can forgive their relatives for aging in this difficult, unexpected way; and they can forgive themselves for not being the caregivers they think they should be.

"You don't have the disease, so stop acting like it. Try to display support to your loved one. You need to avoid being the martyr," she said. "Remember, being a caregiver is your choice."

Most of all, she said, it is important to ask the person early on in the illness, what their end-of-life wishes are. "The outcome of the disease is hard no matter what; try to find out in advance what they want."